Veteran environmental campaigner Bob Brown has urged candidates in this month’s state election to pledge not to alter laws to reverse the current ban on horse training on Levy’s Beach near Warrnambool.
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Mr Brown, the former Greens national leader, called on state planning minister Richard Wynne, opposition planning spokesperson David Davis and other local candidates to promise not to alter laws that currently make horse training on Levy’s illegal.
Mr Brown was at Levy’s Beach on Tuesday night with more than 60 other people as part of a Belfast Coastal Reserve Action Group (BCRAG) event to celebrate the ban imposed last month on horse training on the beach.
The ban was imposed after a legal opinion said the practice breached the Warrnambool Planning Scheme.
“The Greens have said they will not (legalise it), we need the independents to say it too because they may have the balance of power in the Upper House,” Mr Brown said.
Mr Brown said there was a danger the two major political parties could reverse the ban and “sell out public interests back to industrial racing interests.”
Mr Brown said if horse trainers wanted to train their horses on sand, “let the racing industry buy its own sand” and put it on a training track “instead of invading a free public common” that was used by nesting birds as well as people.
Mr Brown said he was not opposed to horse racing but “it has got to pay its own way, the same as everyone else.”
“If the racing industry can come because the sand is good for horses, why not also sell the sand to the cement industry,” he said.
Having horses train on public beaches was “not what public common reserves are about,” Mr Brown said.
BCRAG spokesman Bill Yates said it wanted “candidates to say they support purpose-built off-beach facilities, the types of which exist at Ballarat.” Mr Yates said.
He warned if state government or the racing industry tried to end the ban, the issue would become “tangled up in courts and tribunals.”
BCRAG’s legal advice that horse training on Levy’s breached planning rules was “sound,” he said.
“Now is the time to move on from this,” he urged the state government and the racing industry.
Horse training on Levy’s became popular after the Darren Weir-trained Prince of Penzance won the 2015 Melbourne Cup.
Mr Weir credited having access to south-west beaches to train his horses as a big part of that success.
Mr Yates said there had been little horse training on Levy’s for the past two years because of an investigation into Aboriginal cultural sites in the area.
Despite not having much access to Levy’s, Mr Weir was still a leading Victorian trainer, Mr Yates said.
“The sky has not fallen down,” he said.
Mr Yates also said BCRAG was continuing to investigate, through Freedom of Information requests, why authorities had allowed horses training on Levy’s before it was stopped.
